Valerie Solanas: The Defiant Life of the Woman Who Wrote SCUM

by Breanne Fahs

  University officials frequently required that Valerie attend psychological counseling following these various incidents; at this, Valerie balked and rebelled. She responded with anger and on one occasion overturned a table during a counseling session. She frequently received disciplinary action and was once nearly expelled. Classmates considered her somehow older, hardened, cynical, and different from most women her age. In stark contrast to her peers, Valerie cared little for disguising her sexual interest in women yet occasionally slept with men. She was an out lesbian with an occasional boyfriend, an identity that might be confusing even by today’s standards, let alone in the conservative mid-1950s collegiate culture. An anomaly and a misfit, Valerie preferred to cultivate her own intelligence and free-spiritedness over the conventional aspirations of women her age: “She was an open lesbian at a time when most students were still agonizing over sex before marriage.”66

  Despite the turmoil Valerie ignited in her peers, she excelled in school during her college years. She made Psi Chi, the university honor society in psychology, and became a frequent contributor to her school newspaper, the Diamondback. Cultivating a personality that emphasized humor, audacity, and an acute awareness of sexism, she wrote letters in response to what she perceived as the various injustices committed against women at the time. Though she worked as a feature reporter in 1956, writing tame pieces (such as brief snippets on donating blood and on the costs of a graduate diploma), she began to develop more direct attacks against patriarchy and sexism in her senior year, often using sarcasm and alliteration to make her points.

  Valerie declared in one of her letters, somewhat eerily, that she wrote with a pen “dipped in blood.”67 In a 1957 letter to the editor responding to a classmate’s claim that women seek college degrees only to find a suitable husband, Valerie wittily retorted:

  Do I detect a touch of male arrogance and egotism in the astute report which Mr. Parr so thoughtfully prepared for us? The insipid innuendoes advanced by him are representative of the type of rationalizations indulged in by the typical, conceited, immature male. It is characteristic of males of this calibre [sic] to blithely believe that women are wasting away without them. Such a belief enhances their blatantly bloated egos.

  Mr. Parr would have us believe by his childish chatter that coeds, although lusting for lads, are incapable of hauling in a husband, due to the blasé indifference of their virile associates. He tries to convey an illusion of famished females being rejected on all sides by the dashing, debonair men-about-campus. This is pure nausea! One only has to attend one of the many informal dances, and he will be impressed by the drove-like array of stags mincing mournfully about in quest of a winsome woman . . .

  Mr. Parr’s cogent comment that “many coeds are not here to concentrate on the BA degree, but rather on the MRS degree,” suggests, to me, a wisp of wishful thinking. Can our sadistic statistician cite any “cruel evidence” to substantiate this stabling statement? Apparently he conducted his informal survey solely among the “deadwood” of the female, collegiate populace. If Mr. Parr would broaden his associations to include the more serious-minded element of coedhood, I have no doubt that his conclusions would be of an entirely different nature. But perhaps I’m asking too much, since it’s characteristic of everyone to choose as associates those who are on a comparable intellectual level.

  Certainly many girls expect to eventually commit matrimony (though not all, by far), but can we logically conclude from this that marriage is their primary purpose in coming to college? . . .

  I’m afraid Mr. Parr’s puerile arguments are doomed to fizzlehood. Therefore, I suggest that the infantile Mr. Parr abandon letter writing and adopt a hobby more suitable to his status, such as throwing snow balls in front of the girls’ dorms or instigating panty raids.—Valerie Solanas

  Through such letters, Valerie gained a reputation at her campus as “Maryland’s own little suffragette” (a nickname one of her classmates gave her), who used humor, satire, and anger to fight back against (what she termed) the “pure bigoted drivel” in the newspaper.

  While she gained quite a following among unmarried women students at the university, many men rallied against her both in the newspaper and in one-on-one exchanges. One writer, Hank Walsh, whom Valerie had attacked, called her mode of thinking “Solanian interpreted psychology” and stated sarcastically, “Keep up the good work, Valerie, America needs you.” In a more astute observation of Valerie’s techniques of using sarcasm and advocating for women’s domination of men, one reader, J. L. Partello, responded in a letter to the editor, “It would appear that Miss Solanas establishes a point only so she can stab something or someone with it. Since Miss Solanas has, in the fashion of a female Don Quixote, chosen her own field of battle and her weapons to her own advantage, it would be difficult, if desirable, to dislodge her from her present obnoxious station. . . . My only suggestion for others on campus who might for some reason be interested, is for them to accept Valerie as a campus institution as they would the fountain in front of the math building, and otherwise, go their busy ways.”

  Indeed, Valerie honed in on the power of sarcasm in many of these columns, even sharing her rhetorical strategies in a few of her letters. Foreshadowing later debates about the seriousness of SCUM Manifesto, Valerie declared in a 1957 letter to the editor of the Diamondback, “The primary purpose of satire is to sarcastically scorn human voices and follies.” Her classmates were puzzled about whether her comments about smashing patriarchy and advocating matriarchy represented her beliefs or sarcasm, something Valerie never directly confirmed one way or another. In one Diamondback column, she wrote of women taking power: “The he-man has had his heyday and the femmes are forging ahead. So stouthearts (if you are, indeed, stouthearts), recapture your kingdom! Charge onward in your covered wagons! Don’t be pulled to the pillars of Valerie’s temple! Take heed! Take arms! Take Geritol!”

  Early debates about the seriousness of Valerie’s ideas mimic almost precisely those that followed SCUM Manifesto nearly a decade later. Valerie always walked a thin line between humor and sarcasm, on the one hand, and seriousness and viciousness, on the other. Known by many as incredibly funny (even as a child), Valerie argued in the Diamondback for the merits of humor as a tool to repudiate sexism: “Humor is not a body of logical statements which can be refuted or proved, but is rather a quality which appeals to a sense of ludicrous. Nor can humor, if it is truly good humor, be triumphed over by mere ‘massive education.’”68

  Valerie honed in on the fundamental inequalities around her during her college years, furious that women shouldered an undue burden of both housework and emotional labor in their relationships. In one letter to the Diamondback, she sniped: “A case in point is his statement that ‘men come home at night too tired to make decisions, so the wife willy-nilly has to.’ Of course his wife isn’t tired. All she did all day was chase after the kids, cook, wash clothes, shop, free-scrub floors, etc., while harassed hubby warmed a seat in an air-conditioned office (in between coffee breaks). But he’s too tired to make decisions.” Valerie also used her psychology training to deconstruct the “naturalness” of gender roles, telling readers, “It’s quite sure that were he to take a basic course in psychology, he would realize that no one is naturally anything (where personality variables are concerned).”

  With a penchant for recruiting others to her cause, Valerie submitted several letters that included a list of names, following her own, of women who “ardently upheld” her views in her letters to the Diamondback. In one of her final letters to the editor, titled “Final Thrust,” she concluded with a poem: “Therefore, it seems quite fitting/To dispense with the verbal hitting:/To lay our pens aside for another fray/However, one point must emerge; From my quasi-sadistic purse—/The thrust of my pen was a must! Touche!”

  Having cultivated a reputation for being an outspoken and sardonic advocate for women’s rights, Valerie was given a fifteen-minute slot on a local radio chat show during which cal
lers would seek her characteristically sarcastic and irreverent advice for their “mainstream” problems about dating, marriage, money, friendship, social etiquette, and school. Valerie offered her trademark mix of ferocity and humor to address women’s issues of the day, making up her answers on the fly. Her sister, Judith, laughed as she recalled, “People would actually take her answers seriously.”69

  Despite Valerie’s general tendencies toward being alone, she did develop a few friendships during college, primarily among the more avant-garde crowd. She had a few friends who hung out at Prince George’s restaurant to talk about philosophy and the meaning of life. These friends were artistic, poetic, and interested in jazz. A number of them were psychology majors. The group liked to read Herman Hesse and talk about politics and culture. One, Jean Holroyd, said Valerie had a very, very hard life and did not develop necessary trust, always preferring to live on the fringe: “She had trenchant things to say. It came up that she was a lesbian. Even in our crowd Valerie was on the edge.”70

  In her later years at college, Valerie rented a room in College Park nearby and, according to Dick Spottiswood, a student she knew, worked her way through the rest of college as a prostitute and cocktail waitress. Dick felt intimidated by Valerie, describing her as having a brutal honesty about her. She told him stories about the sexual abuse she had experienced and the many difficult events that she had confronted. In an interview he showed mixed emotions, recalling that one summer Valerie had suggested that he come up to Atlantic City with her to find work as a waiter while she worked as a cocktail waitress and turned tricks: “Whenever possible, she would get her tricks drunk and roll them [steal from them].”71 (Valerie later told psychiatrists that she made money in college through prostitution while living a “homosexual life for enjoyment.”72) One night when she suggested that she and Dick have sex, he was somewhat alarmed, as “she was someone I feared.”73 He was at her place; she was cooking on a little hot plate and suddenly asked, “How would you like to spend the night with me?” Somewhat nervously, he replied, “Valerie, I thought you liked girls,” to which she responded, “Everyone likes a change once in a while.” It was, he said, a clinical experience.74

  In her push-pull relationships with her male friends, Valerie expressed a deep-seated ambivalence toward the men in her life. Valerie once asked Dick to make an X-rated movie (“something strictly pornographic”) and would occasionally wear makeup around him. “She looked feminine and vulnerable. She looked beautiful,” he recalled and recounted that Valerie led two separate lives—one as a “working girl” and the other as a scholar. On campus, she would “plunge into her academic work.” His relationship with Valerie was marked by both her intense neediness and her generosity. “If she could do you a favor she would,” he remarked. Still, if you helped her once, she often came back for more. When Dick tried to cut back on helping her, she perceived this as a slight and retreated completely, never asking him for anything again.75

  Valerie’s sexual escapades threatened and confused people and often got her into trouble. Family members wondered whether Valerie should be placed in a mental hospital for “oversexed women,” because she used sex for personal advancement and money-making. “She just enjoyed sex and using sex as a means to an end,” her cousin Robert said.76 Her romantic entanglements, however, were even more difficult to decipher.

  Her relationships with men during this time may have led to a brief, opportunistic marriage. While living in College Park, she met and took classes with a Greek classmate, Paul Apostolides, who wanted to stay in the country and become a US citizen. “He discovered that if you married an American citizen, back then you became an American citizen automatically, so she said, ‘Okay, we’ll get married,’” Robert reported. The marriage lasted six months, after which time Apostolides went on his way and she went on hers and they divorced. “She may have gotten paid for it,” her cousin said. “Knowing her she probably got something out of it. That was a very short marriage for the time.”77

  Valerie eventually graduated from the University of Maryland at College Park in 1958 with a major in psychology. Interested in pursuing a career in evolutionary and biological psychology, she applied and gained admission to the master’s program in psychology at the University of Minnesota that same year. Entering the program in the fall of 1958, she expected to find opportunities for continued educational advancement and exploration. Instead, she faced quite the opposite: the glass ceiling and other forms of gender bias; she was one of only a few women to enter her graduate program. She concluded that all the grants and scholarships went to women, while all the jobs, research money, and resources went to men. Women faced the continual barrier of not being able to advance within the field, something Valerie resented. She wanted and expected more from her graduate education. No longer sheltered by her mutually affectionate relationship with Robert Brush, she faced the harsh reality that she could not advance professionally as a female psychologist. “Valerie Solanas understood how the deck was stacked against any female who wanted something other than marriage and motherhood,” the reporter Judith Coburn later wrote.78

  In the spring 1959 semester, Valerie racked up four As and two Bs, and, adding to her primary interest in psychology, declared a graduate minor in philosophy. She hung on for two semesters as a graduate student, earnestly trying to find her way in a system that favored men and their experiences. Then, after nearly a year in graduate school, she claimed she “got bored,” abruptly dropped out of school, and disappeared.

  Valerie’s sister, Judith, believes that Valerie’s withdrawal from graduate school signaled that “something had gone terribly wrong.”79 After dropping out of the University of Minnesota, Valerie drifted through various parts of the country and lived with several men, none of whom she liked. With hitchhiking as her means of transport, she made a jagged trip from Minnesota to California. From fall 1959 to spring 1960, she roamed around, lost and trying to find her way.

  She eventually arrived in Berkeley in the summer of 1960 and spent time at the university, hanging out with people and taking a few classes there. While visiting California, still spinning from her departure from graduate school, her recent excursions throughout the country, and the anger she felt bubbling up toward men and their privilege, she started to ruminate on what would become her most famous work: SCUM Manifesto. Honing in on her love of writing, she also laid plans for a play.

  Valerie had not yet found a place where she belonged. Traveling back again across the country, she hitchhiked her way to New Jersey, where she attended another graduate program (the exact school is still unknown) for a period of at least a year (1961–62). Many years later, she told a good friend that during that period in New Jersey, on weekends and school breaks she would periodically leave school and take the bus to Manhattan and go to Greenwich Village. On discovering the Village, she had fallen in love with its atmosphere and vowed to live there one day. In stark contrast to the relatively mellow cities of her childhood and adolescence, New York offered something far more compelling: freedom to express herself, openness to differences in sexual identities, and the chaotic tangle of modern urban life. Greenwich Village symbolized for Valerie the center of a new universe: “Women were holding hands and men were holding hands and she liked that. She wanted to live in New York City one day. It’s where she’s lived, more or less.”80

  Valerie’s spirits brightened in these years, and she would take trips home to tell family about her experiences venturing into New York City. Robert said, “When you would sit down and talk with her, she seemed to know a lot about everything. When it came to politics and social behavior and the way people acted, she knew a lot about that and it was absolutely accurate and everything. I found it fascinating.”81 Judith’s husband, Ramon, similarly recalled, “I loved listening to Valerie! I’d stay up half the night. You didn’t talk, you listened to her theories. She read everything. Her thinking was far in advance of everyone. She talked about what she called the Mob (GE, RCA
, all the giant corporations that were taking over the media—later in the ’60s we called it the System) and how soon they’d control all the information. Nobody was talking about that then. And about men. She had our number!”82

  EARLY DAYS IN NEW YORK (1962–1966)

  While living in New Jersey and commuting into New York for day trips, Valerie made a decision that would forever change her life: she was determined to become a writer. Sometime around 1960–61, she started writing her play, Up Your Ass, a gender-bending romp about a character named Bongi and the “degenerates” she encounters along her way. Valerie’s energy, wit, sarcasm, and humor now met with her increasing exposure to alternative ways of living and thinking—bohemia, the budding counterculture of Greenwich Village, and early traces of a queer community. New York had transformed her professional interests—while only a few years earlier she had wanted to pursue a degree working in evolutionary and biological psychology, she now saw herself as a playwright and provocateur.

  Valerie longed to move to New York City permanently but could not yet afford it. Visiting there, the outcast of outcasts finally felt at least a marginal sense of belonging. In the summer of 1962, she moved to Manhattan, finding lodging at a women’s residence hotel in a brownstone near the river on the Upper West Side. She listed on a postcard to her father a return address of 350 West Eighty-Eighth Street. Though she did not yet live in Greenwich Village, she was exuberant about her move. On June 28, 1962, she sent a postcard to her father, Louis, and his wife, Kay, to 2503 Fourteenth Street Northeast in Washington, DC, that read:

  Dear Pop + Kay,

  I have a really nice room in a girls’ residence hotel. Only 12/wk + all the hotel services—24hr switchboard service, etc. I was going to live in the Village, but it’s too expensive.